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Uptown New Orleans, New Orleans — Area Guide & Where to Stay
Uptown New Orleans is the long residential crescent that follows the Mississippi River above the city's Central Business District. St. Charles Avenue runs its length under a canopy of live oaks, lined with 19th-century mansions and two university campuses. Audubon Park and the Audubon Zoo fill the ground between the avenue and the river. The district is known for that avenue, its old houses, and the streetcar still rolling along it.
About Uptown New Orleans
Where to stay in Uptown New Orleans
Where you base yourself shapes the visit — here's the character of each area.
Uptown is where you stay for quiet. Its guesthouses and converted mansions line St. Charles Avenue and the shaded streets just off it, among them the Park View Guest House across from Audubon Park. The district suits sightseers who would rather catch the streetcar to the zoo than bar-hop after dark.
Room counts run lower here than downtown. Anyone set on late nightlife or a convention hotel does better in the Central Business District, a short streetcar ride toward the river.
About Uptown New Orleans
What are the main landmarks in Uptown New Orleans?
Audubon Park holds the district's biggest draw, the Audubon Zoo, spread along the riverside end. Around Tulane University stand its teaching collections: the Newcomb Art Gallery, the Middle American Research Institute, and Greer Field at Turchin Stadium. St. Charles Avenue and the streets off it are lined with preserved houses, among them the George Washington Cable House, the Simon Hernsheim House, and the Isaacs-Williams Mansion.
Churches mark the corners as well, from the Basilica of St. Stephen up to the First Presbyterian Church of New Orleans on the avenue. Walk it slowly.
What is the history of Uptown New Orleans?
Uptown took shape through the 19th century as New Orleans spread upriver, absorbing a chain of former plantations and riverfront faubourgs. A streetcar line ran out along St. Charles Avenue in the 1830s, and grand houses rose beside its tracks as the wealthy moved uptown. Carrollton was its own town once.
The independent settlement at the upper bend was annexed by the city in 1874. The 1884 World's Cotton Centennial Exposition filled the grounds that became Audubon Park, and Tulane University built its campus across from the park in the decade that followed.
Where is Uptown New Orleans?
The district curves along the Mississippi River, wrapping the long bend that sits upstream of downtown New Orleans. The water forms its riverside edge. Inland, St. Charles Avenue and Camp Street cross the whole length from the Central Business District out to the upriver bend at Carrollton.
The Garden District adjoins it on the downstream side. Audubon Park breaks the grid midway toward the river.
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Updated July 2026